Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/183

 Delia, like the other women, did her share in serving the good things to eat and drink, which ranged from roast meats to pies and from filtered river water to raging strong drink supplied in a burst of generosity and good fellowship by the whisky boat—Hule's, as it happened.

Music for the dancing followed from two fiddles, banjo, several guitars, accordeon, and a talking machine or two. The dance was on the Sacred Concert Boat, as the theatre boat was called. It lasted far into the night, but Delia, after watching the river men and women dance a while in their rough and careless way, declared that she could not possibly dance, not even if she tried—not like that.

Nevertheless, she did a notable thing, for she permitted Urleigh, the companion of White Collar Dan, to take her to the supper tables where the cold remnants of the evening feast were stacked up. She allowed him to place a chair for her, and to pour her a cup of coffee from the big pot simmering over the live coals in the mudroast hole.

Urleigh, long enraptured with the newspaper business of gathering news, had found a good deal more than traces and facts in the story of the diamonds which he was following down. He had White Collar Dan's story in part—so far as Delia was concerned and fortune, or rather Delia, favoured him when he sought